


A Giant Baker's Dozen

by fourthage



Category: Glitch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:12:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourthage/pseuds/fourthage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the beginning, the giants thought themselves into existence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Giant Baker's Dozen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [such_heights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/such_heights/gifts).



In the beginning, the giants thought each other into existence.  You may be tempted to ask how something that did not exist created anything, but this is not a story concerned with _how_.  It is enough that they did.

Alph was the first to take a name for himself.   It helped that he invented the concept of names and speech.  He often unconsciously acts as a focus for the other giants' unspoken or half-formed wishes.  If the creation of the world had to be attributed to any one giant, it would be Alph, but the truth is a little more complicated.  Out of all the giants, he is most concerned with _why_ and occasionally _how_.  He would have found the previous paragraph unsatisfactory too.   

Alph may be credited for creating the world, but Cosma created the skies.  Air is harder than it looks, and the vacuum of space doubly so.  It takes a special kind of mind to conceive of vast emptiness, and then resist the urge to fill it.  Certainly there are comets, and stars, and other worlds spinning around them, but the number of places that could be called _there_ are vastly outnumbered by the _not there yets_.     Cosma has never touched the ground, constantly pulled away by her ever-expanding realm.

Opposites attract, so it should be no surprise that the giant Cosma is closest to is Zille.  Zille is so much a part of the earth that she moves through it like a shark through water.  Soft loam and hard rock both give way as she passes, and are constantly reshaped in her wake.  The mountains are thought to be her gift to Cosma: a bit of earth raised to touch the heavens.  It is only for Cosma that Zille is fanciful; in all other matters she takes pride in being the most grounded of the giants.  (Don’t groan, it’s _her_ pun.)

Friendly is the giant of the edges.  You can find him in the dark places, with whatever resides there, or wherever things are distant and indistinct.  Despite this, or maybe because of it, he is also the giant most concerned with communication.  Unlike the other giants, his name is less an appellation than a description.  If you are ever in need, but don’t know what exactly your need is, Friendly will be happy to help.

If you do know what you need, you might try Pot.  Giant of material comforts, he is as generous as he is round (which is very, if you have not had the fortune of seeing an icon of him).  He is a bit of a magpie and adores anything shiny or sparkly.  His natural antagonist among the giants is Mab, who believes the good things in life must be earned.  Pot calls her a killjoy, she calls him a layabout, and it tends to go downhill very quickly from there.  They usually make up by agreeing not to talk to each other for the next month.  

Mab doesn’t mind.  It lets her get things done.  In her opinion, all good things come to those who seek to make something better from what they have.  Mab is a domestic influence.  She imposes order on her fellow giants’ creations and transforms them into new and unexpected harvests.  Mab looks fondly on honest effort and rewards patience.

The most impatient of all the giants is Lem.  He invented teleportation to skip the inconvenience of actually having to pass through the space between one point and the next.  All giants are capable of teleportation, but only Lem uses it exclusively.  He is, however, the only giant capable of teleporting with a _who_ or _what_ , but no _where_ in mind.  

In a moment of questionable wisdom by the rest of the giants, Lem later became known as the patron of travel as well.  As all points are essentially the same to him, this might also be an example of the giants’ collective sense of humor.

Well, except for Spriggan.  The unanimous consensus among the giants is that he has no sense of humor.  This may come as a surprise, since the trees he so carefully safeguards will rib anyone who walks up to them, but try to tell a joke to Spriggan and you will get nothing but a flat stare that says, yes, he is aware that was supposed to be funny and no, he is not amused.  He does smile, but usually only with Mab, who shares his deep sense of responsibility.

Humbaba is also responsible, in her own way, but her dominion is too mobile for Spriggan to properly appreciate.  Any creature that walks, or crawls, or flies has Humbaba’s love.  As a result, she is also the giant most acquainted with death.  The other giants sometimes tease her for being overindulgent with her creations, but not too much.  For whatever else they are, none of the giants are cruel.  Humbaba is as at home on the ground as she is in the sky.

Equally mutable is Grenaldine.  As giant of water in all its forms, she both shapes and is shaped by the realms of the other giants.  Her rivers cut swaths through Zille’s rock, and her clouds are whipped by Cosma’s winds.  She is, perhaps, the least likely of all the giants to take or give offense, and is often sought out by the others when they are in need of a sympathetic ear.

Tii was the last of the giants to take physical form.  Numbers, real and imaginary, blossomed in hir mind, pure abstraction more compelling than the flesh hir fellow giants had taken to themselves.  Sie appreciates the clean simplicity of a binary system, but only as an observer, not a participant.   

Tii has no mouth, except occasionally when sie speaks.  Sometimes sie forgets to check first.

These, then, are the powers that made your world.  Does it help to know they were as surprised by you as you were of them?  You were something none of them anticipated, and yet they decided to trust you with all they created.  So, go on.  Show them what you’ll make of it.


End file.
